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Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

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Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#81

Post by car12 »

sokoloff wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income inequality comparisons are full of problems like this. Reflecting your intuition, I’d imagine most people would conceive of increasing income inequality to mean increasing gaps between people in the same station in life across two time periods. But demographics have changed dramatically since 1970. For example, immigrants make up almost 3x as large a fraction of the population (from 5% to almost 15%) than in 1…

I also suspect that some of these "oversights" aren't mistakes at all, but rather intentional obfuscation of facts. Take note of how often you hear/read something like "incomes haven't risen in 30 years, but prices have gone up over 50% over that period". [Almost?] Inevitably, the income will be real income [inflation adjusted] and the prices nominal prices .

You can't win elections if you actually start talking about most contributing factors. In that case, very soon you'll be discussing immigration as your most important point and start sounding like Trump. Woops!

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#82

Post by sokoloff »

frankbreetz wrote: post #78
sokoloff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also suspect that some of these "oversights" aren't mistakes at all, but rather intentional obfuscation of facts. Take note of how often you hear/read something like "incomes haven't risen in 30 years, but prices have gone up over 50% over that period". [Almost?] Inevitably, the income will be real income [inflation adjusted] and the prices nominal prices .

Do you have a source for such a comparison, everything I have seen is all real prices. I know rent and college had gone up about 50% in real prices and some things like food and high end electronics have gone down. Honestly, your comment seems like intentional obfuscation of facts.

Pay attention over the coming 3 months to articles and headlines on inflation and wages on social and mainstream media. I think you'll find that well over half of them omit stating key assumptions/sources, and appear to be authored so as to lead the audience to the wrong (or at least an exaggerated) conclusion.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#83

Post by bluedino »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #25
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it’s a collective social decision that’s generally seen as good for the average person. How popular do you think it would be if Walmart went on stage at the next shareholder meeting and said “yeah, automated terminals are working great, we aim to fire all our cashiers over the next few years”?

That’s just progress. We don’t miss the days of travel agents or horse buggies either. Railing against progress is simply tilting at windmills.

Travel agents still exist. There are just fewer of them and they are target at a different market.

People who don’t want to waste time reading hotel reviews and deal-hunting on travel sites.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#84

Post by jdietrich »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #51
luckydata wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world those are called "redistributive policies" and work quite well, especially for the economy as a whole. http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/can-redistribution...

They work well... until they don't. Anyone from Eastern Europe over the age of about 40 can tell you about it. Like anything else redistribution falls on it's face if you go too crazy with it.

There is a world of difference between redistribution and central planning.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#85

Post by jdavis703 »

harryh wrote: post #79
frankbreetz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for such a comparison, everything I have seen is all real prices. I know rent and college had gone up about 50% in real prices and some things like food and high end electronics have gone down. Honestly, your comment seems like intentional obfuscation of facts.

Housing costs are only going up because people are buying/renting bigger houses (despite the fact that mean houshold size has decreased by almost a full person in 50 years). On a per square foot basis, you don't really see an increase. http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

How does this explain the price increases in older, urban housing stock? I’ve been renting 500-600 sq. ft. one bedroom apartments for the past seven years. My rent has gone up from $1900 a month to now $2790 month. This is all within the same zip code.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#86

Post by downrightmike »

car12 wrote: post #55
shdh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employers would be forced to pay higher wages and people would be more easily to retrain for different jobs. Labor has long been subject to outsourcing as a result of entities trying to reduce costs and increase profits.

That is true but we're talking about the still remaining low skilled jobs that simply could not be outsourced. Now with a high number of low skilled immigrants competing with natives for those same remaining low skilled jobs that couldn't be outsourced, the outcome is worse for existing population.

There is also a trend where as much is outsourced as possible and what isn't outsourced is over tasked. I've seen outsourcing going from a direct replacement 1 to 1 to 3X the staff and the remaining non outsourced people have to basically be human databases and regurgitate info and critically think for this other group. Adding in constant instant message rooms that are mandatory to be logged into and constantly pinged is just insane. No employees win in this situation.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#87

Post by deogeo »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #80
FooHentai wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you live in a first world country and your skill set is worse than somebody in the developing world, you’re going to have a bad time. Even if your skill set is greater, your cost of living is higher. So you'd have to be more than marginally better. Also, the logical conclusion of where this seems to be headed is that if you're a low-skill person living in a first-world county, voting for protectionist, isolationi…

Sure, as we saw quite vividly in 2016. This is also known as Crab Mentality.

It's really not - crab mentality refers to pulling others down for no reason other than envy. But in this case, the reason is the lower classes don't want to be pushed even lower. Are they supposed to selflessly sacrifice themselves so that the rich can get even richer?

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#88

Post by harryh »

jdavis703 wrote: post #85
harryh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing costs are only going up because people are buying/renting bigger houses (despite the fact that mean houshold size has decreased by almost a full person in 50 years). On a per square foot basis, you don't really see an increase. http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

How does this explain the price increases in older, urban housing stock? I’ve been renting 500-600 sq. ft. one bedroom apartments for the past seven years. My rent has gone up from $1900 a month to now $2790 month. This is all within the same zip code.

There are definitely some outliers, particularly in urban centers (primarily due to overly restrictive zoning codes). I was speaking about averages.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#89

Post by cycrutchfield »

deogeo wrote: post #87
cycrutchfield wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, as we saw quite vividly in 2016. This is also known as Crab Mentality.

It's really not - crab mentality refers to pulling others down for no reason other than envy. But in this case, the reason is the lower classes don't want to be pushed even lower. Are they supposed to selflessly sacrifice themselves so that the rich can get even richer?

They want the economy to suffer to preserve their legacy careers doing pointless things like mining coal or forging steel, things that somebody in a developing nation can do just as well for 1/10 the cost. Why are blue collar jobs so sacrosanct? When the careers of secretaries and travel agents essentially vanished, there was no weeping and moaning, no irrational protectionism, no economic suicide. People moved on to do something more productive with their time, and so should the coal miners.

So, yes, they are crabs at the bottom of the pot seeing other crabs moving up, and they cannot abide by that.

Re: Rising US Inequality: How We Got Here, Where We're Going

#90

Post by strken »

car12 wrote: post #81
sokoloff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also suspect that some of these "oversights" aren't mistakes at all, but rather intentional obfuscation of facts. Take note of how often you hear/read something like "incomes haven't risen in 30 years, but prices have gone up over 50% over that period". [Almost?] Inevitably, the income will be real income [inflation adjusted] and the prices nominal prices .

You can't win elections if you actually start talking about most contributing factors. In that case, very soon you'll be discussing immigration as your most important point and start sounding like Trump. Woops!

I sympathise with this view, but I'm not sure it's that simple. If you're Chinese or Bangladeshi or from anywhere else that's a poster child of globalisation, you can still compete with the US labour force from your own country. If you're allowed to immigrate, you get access to infrastructure, cultural knowledge, a somewhat functional legal system, and other force multipliers which might allow you to compete with more efficiency... but you'd still be competing even if you were back home.
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